


A Warmer Place to Sleep

by Northern_Star



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-02
Updated: 2012-04-02
Packaged: 2017-11-02 21:55:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/373752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northern_Star/pseuds/Northern_Star
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Taylor is a little annoyed by the fact that they never sleep in his room, for reasons that don't even make all that much sense in his own head...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Warmer Place to Sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> A small (and sadly, very late) birthday present for silverspotted. <3
> 
> The idea for this was simple, and the fic is short, but it took several rewrites to get it just right (I blame Taylor, he was being difficult!) -- title from an old John Mellencamp song.

They've been sitting around in the living room, playing video games, when all of a sudden, Taylor blurts out, "Hey, Ebs, how come we never sleep in my room?" It's a random thought that totally came out of nowhere, and takes Taylor a little bit by surprise, in fact.

"What?" 

"How come we never sleep in _my_ room?"

"I don't know," says Ebs. "Because the other one is bigger? There's an adjoining bathroom?" He shrugs as he asks, "Does it matter?"

"Well..." Taylor starts, but he doesn't exactly know how to respond. It's not like he's taken much time debating the pros and cons of sleeping in either bedroom; the thought came to him for the first time just a moment ago. Except that now that he _is_ thinking about it, he seems to have some pretty strong feelings about all of this. "Yeah, it kind of does," he ends up saying. It's the only argument he can come up with on such short notice.

"You know, it kind of stopped being just my room a few months back," says Ebs as he pauses the game and sets his controller on the coffee table. "It's more like a master bedroom now, and the other one's pretty much just a guest room that never gets any use."

 _Guest_ room? That never gets any use?

The words make Taylor feel like he's been checked into the boards. Hard. "It's not a _guest_ room," he argues, getting up from the couch. "It's _my_ room. And you know how I know it's my room? Because that's where all my stuff is. But maybe you never noticed me hauling my ass there every morning in order to get dressed." He's halfway to the front door by the time he's done—he needs to get some fresh air.

"Wait‒ Hallsy? Where are you going?" Ebs calls after him. 

Ebs sounds concerned, or confused, maybe... but Taylor is too ticked off to differentiate. "We're out of toothpaste," he says over his shoulder as he slips out of the apartment. He's not sure they're actually out of anything at all, let alone toothpaste—for all he knows, they have enough reserves to last them for the next six months—only, it's the first thing that came to mind. 

He drives around the neighborhood aimlessly for a little while, mumbling to himself the entire way, then eventually ends up at the pharmacy. He'll be damned if he doesn't come back home again having actually bought some toothpaste, no matter if they have reserves for all of eternity or not.

A shy teenager comes up to him and nervously asks for an autograph. Taylor scribbles his name on the back of what looks like a birthday card, suddenly feeling like an idiot, standing here in aisle four, in front of about twenty-three million different kinds of toothpaste at nine thirty on a Friday night.

He needs to go home already and work this thing out with Ebs, tell him it's simply that he's sick of feeling like he's just visiting—like if he was from out of town, since his stuff is all the way over in the other bedroom. Sure, it beats sleeping alone, but he doesn't want to be just _visiting_ with Ebs, he'd really rather be living there instead. 

Of course, Taylor realizes that he'd probably sound crazy trying to explain it _that way_ , especially since he already does live there, but he's pretty confident that between the time he grabs the first tube of toothpaste that's within reach, and when he's back home again, he can have it all figured out in a way that he can explain it to someone else. Or to Ebs, at any rate.

When he gets back to the apartment, Taylor notices that the video game they were playing is still paused and the score's the same as when he last looked. There's a light on in Ebs' bedroom, though, so he takes a deep breath and resolutely heads over there. But when he looks inside the room and all he sees is a pile of clothes on the bed and an open suitcase on the floor, Taylor's heart just about stops.

"Ebs?" he calls, worried.

"Oh, hey, you're back," says Ebs, poking his head out of the walk-in closet. 

"What are you—? Ebs? Are you leaving?" Taylor is about this close from freaking out, and probably not doing a very good job of hiding it.

Ebs blinks at him. "Leaving?" he echoes, looking confused, but he suddenly gets it just a moment later. "Oh! No, I'm just making some room for your stuff. You know, so you won't have to walk all the way over to the other room to get dressed in the morning?"

"Oh." Well, so much for spending the drive back trying to find all the right words, then... Taylor _is_ sort of glad that Ebs gets him so well, though, because he's still not sure he'd found a way to explain the whole idea of visiting versus living there in a way that doesn't make him sound kind of dumb.

"Unless you'd really rather we slept in the other room?" says Ebs, frowning. "We could move my stuff there instead, if that's what you want?"

"No," Taylor replies, glancing around the room, "I like your room. It's...you know, bigger and stuff."

"Look, um, I'm sorry about before. I mean, there was never anything stopping you from keeping your stuff in here instead of all the way over there, but maybe I should have said so..."

Taylor shrugs. "Maybe I could have figured it out on my own." 

"C'mon," Ebs tells him as he pats him gently on the arm, "go get your stuff already."

~*~*~

A good hour later, Ebs is lying on the bed, waiting for Taylor to be done stuffing the last of his mountain of socks into the middle drawer of the dresser.

"Done!" says Taylor victoriously, as he forces the overflowing drawer closed. He drops onto the bed next to Ebs with a contented sigh, and they lie there in silence for a little while.

"Hey, Hallsy?"

"Yeah?"

"For future reference? I don't really care where I sleep, as long as you're sleeping there with me," says Ebs quietly, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

"So, what, like, you'd be okay with sleeping on the couch if I suggested it?"

"The couch is too small and you know it," Ebs replies with a snort.

"The floor, then?" says Taylor, and he chuckles as he adds, "There's plenty of room on the floor for both of us."

Ebs glances over, wearing that expression that clearly means he thinks Taylor is kind of an idiot, then rolls his eyes as he says, "Even you're not dumb enough to sleep on the floor when there's a perfectly fine bed right here under your ass."

"Yeah, probably not."

"So can we settle for this bed for now, then?"

"You know?" says Taylor, turning on his side and resting his chin against Ebs' shoulder, "that sounds like a really good plan." 

 

=> End.


End file.
